Open Access: What it is and why it is required for scholarly community?

Introduction to Open Access to scholarly literature. Problems with traditional academic publishing and impact of Internet. Definition of Open Access and models. Why Open Access is required for the scientific and scholarly community? What can bloggers do to support Open Access. Open Access status in India.

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But on similar concept <ul><li>It relates to access to results of public funded research </li></ul><ul><li>It relates to access to that knowledge which scientists and scholars give away for free after years of hard work </li></ul>

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Let us see how <ul><li>Knowledge is produced and consumed by scientists and scholars </li></ul>

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Situation is even worse in developing countries <ul><li>Most reputed journals are published in developed countries (U.S / Europe) and are monopolized by few publishers </li></ul><ul><li>Purchases are in foreign currency </li></ul><ul><li>Even best indigenous research is published in foreign journals </li></ul>

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Where is the catch? <ul><li>Scientists / scholars need to publish articles </li></ul><ul><li>Publishers seek transfer of copyrights in their favour in lieu of publication of their articles </li></ul><ul><li>They had no other alternative than to gave away their copyrights to get their articles published </li></ul>

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Open Access is the answer to the ills of conventional academic publishing <ul><li>Open-access (OA) literature </li></ul><ul><li>is [scholarly,] digital, online, </li></ul><ul><li>free of charge, </li></ul><ul><li>and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. </li></ul><ul><li>What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder. </li></ul><ul><li>[ Peter Suber -http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm] </li></ul>

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Open Access (OA) means free and online access to scholarly literature that can be freely disseminated further with proper author attribution. It brings down barriers to scientific communication by using Internet

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Open Access Publishing <ul><li>Open Access Journals perform peer review like their conventional counterparts and then make the approved contents freely available to the world. </li></ul>http://www.doaj.org/ Has 3372 journals in the directory as on 21 st May 2008

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Open Access Repositories <ul><li>Open Access Repositories allow authors / right holders to deposit their articles </li></ul><ul><li>May allow preprints (pre-published manuscripts) </li></ul><ul><li>Normally allow post-prints (peer-reviewed and published articles) </li></ul><ul><li>Most reputed academic publishers allow authors to deposit some version of their articles in such repositories [http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php] </li></ul>Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) had 1065 registered repositories as on 21 st May 2008. http://roar.eprints.org/

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So, Why Open Access is required for the scientific and scholarly community?

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Newton, “ If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants ”

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Community Both the Producer and Consumer <ul><li>Scholarly community is working for furtherance of science and knowledge </li></ul><ul><li>Most work is given away for free. </li></ul><ul><li>Outsider publishers with commercial interests benefits and creates barriers in communication among the community </li></ul><ul><li>Internet has provided an alternative means of peer review, publication and distribution. </li></ul><ul><li>Internet based scholarly communication advances the science without lose of time </li></ul>

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Public Good <ul><li>Research funded out of public money should be publically accessible </li></ul><ul><li>Number of universities, academic institutions and research funding agencies are making Open Access as mandatory requirement [http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/] </li></ul>

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Blog on Peer-Reviewed Research “ Research Blogging helps you locate and share academic blog posts about peer-reviewed research. Bloggers use our icon to identify their thoughtful posts about serious research, and those posts are collected here for easy reference”. - http://researchblogging.org/index.php